Everybody Knows
by there's no time
Summary: Written for a fanfic challenge at the Faye and Spike community on LJ, given the lyrics to "Everybody Knows" by Denali.


Sometimes people say things you don't understand. But what they say sticks with you for a long time, until someday something happens to you and afterwards, you look back, and realize the significance of those words from long ago. And it's so true and correct and perfect, to the point of pain.

Many newly realized lessons run through Faye's mind as Spike is kissing her. She feels the shock of his lips against hers, and with it she feels a chill seeping into her from him. With sudden recognition, she realizes that it is a cold she remembers from being dead a long time ago, from where she came out of the decades of bitter chill, to a place where no one even remembered her name.

What followed after her awakening flashes through her mind in this instant with Spike so close to her now: advancing her natural skill and cool precision with a firearm, the blisters and calluses on her hands while she learned to pilot a monopod, getting used to her feet never being solidly on the ground in zero gravity. She woke up without a past, or a home, or anything to regret. From there she was forced to go out and find all of that, to try and make it out of nothing.

That nothingness, which she can now taste on Spike, embodies itself now in a cold she feels down to her toes. The closeness and intimacy between them is a distinctive first, between two people who had before now barely gotten within arm's length, perhaps close enough to punch or kick, or hear an insult snapped back at the other, loud enough to sting the ears. It's like kissing a dead man, bending over the corpse in a coffin at a funeral just before shooting him out into the vastness of space, the remains destined to become nothing but a streak in the atmosphere, the children at the wake crying out that they thought they saw the sleeping man move, saw his eyes flicker, unable to understand death for at least another few years.

Defying understanding, Faye is still moving, thrashing within the pineboard confines of her life, the suffocation very subtle to the point it's almost pleasing. She died, but she still lives, and she knows Spike died too now because he feels the same way she does, a walking ghost with no where to go.

Faye's feet are never solidly on the ground while living in space, living outside any planetary atmosphere. The only thing holding her down is the constant rotation of wherever she is, such as the Bebop where she lives now, which spins to create a kind of gravity, the mini-version of how it works on spinning planets. It's comforting, the spinning, it takes some getting used to but it creates order out of an otherwise utterly chaotic universe.

But she can easily overcome it with a slight leap. She can toss a poker chip in the air and it will float forward forever until it hits a wall and bounces off in another direction. Nothing holds her to this existence that can't be conquered.

Except now she has found someone like her. It's becoming very clear to Faye now that every moment they have is undeserved. Every moment together: a man and a woman who should both be dead. Faye is thinking hard about second chances while Spike kisses her. She concludes: People are like words. You sometimes don't understand them until something happens and then you realize the meaning.

Spike has become quite clear to her.

These revelations flow through Faye's mind before Spike's lips leave hers, pulling back in a blur, removing his fingers which had been digging into her bare arms to hold her still. He opens his eyes and looks down at her. She looks at him in his opened eyes and there doesn't seem to be anything there to catch, some flickering sign that he'd been thinking the same thing. One of his eyes doesn't show any emotion at all. It's like expecting to see a window, but it has somehow become merely a mirror. Faye doesn't like what she sees at all and it enrages her.

She hauls off and slaps him across the face, connecting much harder than she'd meant to, thinking that Spike would just get out of her way. At the wincingly loud sound of palm against cheek, the pool players in the corner of the bar begin to laugh uproariously, bent over with their pool cues doubling as crutches to keep them from falling on the ground in their mirth.

"Thanks Faye," Spike says perkily, eyes looking down at her shoes, which are suspended above the floor as Faye sits on a tall barstool. He rubs his steadily reddening cheek. "Sorry to sneak up on you like that, but you just earned me ten thousand easy woolongs." He glances into her eyes. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Go to hell." She pushes him away. She considers pulling her gun.

"Hey, it was just a bet. You of all people should appreciate that," he tells her as he lightly sways away from her in his unique interpretation of drunken staggering, aggravating Faye at the way his feet too easily lilt about in the heavy gravity of this planet. She watches him behind her, in the mirror over the bar, as he collects on his bet from the pool players, who are wiping away tears of laughter and toweling off the spilled beer. The patrons of the bar turn away from the scene with the beautiful, unapproachable woman in the center of all the attention, as Faye lights another cigarette.

She still feels like all eyes are on her, like they all know what went through her drunken head as Spike softly clutched her shoulder and twirled her around on her barstool, put his hand to the curve of her chin, and pulled her close. Faye stands to leave, on shaky legs, heavy with the burden of a secret Spike forced her to realize, and she's forced to keep. She wraps her arms together and shivers in the cold.

Keeping her secret is one of only a few regrets she can remember, and a part of her will never let it go. Renewing inwardly her grudge against Spike, she leaves the planet's orbit and returns to the weightlessness of space.

Leaving the atmosphere, as her hair begins to lift off her shoulders and the collar of her shirt tickles her cheeks, she smiles to see the Bebop ahead; satisfaction lighting in her eyes as she twirls the stolen key to Spike's monopod in two fingers.

"Faye," Jet coms her, saying her name in surprise. "You're back already. Hangar's open. Where's Spike?"

"He might not be back for a while, Jet," she sighs.

"Aww, he get in another fight?"

"You could say that. He shouldn't get so close to dangerous people, you know?"


End file.
